Is time linear?

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elricik

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Nov 1, 2008
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First off you have to understand that no one knows what Time may be.
It's certainly nothing to do with clocks, atomic or of the wrist variety.

The brain has it's own internal clock that it electro-chemical in nature and consists of a small area in the brain that experiences a neurochemically regular reaction.
It ticks regularly if you will.
I'm trying to remember what the area is called. No matter.

That area can be made to speed up and slow down by various means so that the subject experiences time "passing" at different rates.
You've experienced this yourself...'time flies when you're having fun' etc...
Well those sayings are based in fact.
You can alter your subjective experience of time.

As for "objective" time.....
Well no one knows.
What actually is it that clocks are dividing up ?
They seem to be measuring something but no one knows what.
It's not like length.
You can point to an object with a real physical reality and say "that's one unit in length".
But time is abstract.
All you're doing is dividing up this something into successively smaller intervals.
In fact that's a major area of contention in quantum research : Does the notion of time have any meaning or is it merely the concept of the interval that has relevance ?

No one knows.
Yet.

So, to get back to the question.

Basically subjective time can be non-linear.
Objective time has no meaning but if you create a clock that ticks at regular intervals then you have linear time.
If you create a clock that ticks in a non-linear way then you have non-linear time.

It's a head wrecker isn't it ?
What are your thought's on time?
 

Skeleon

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Nov 2, 2007
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I think that time is the 4th dimension and we simply lack the ability to move through it at will. So to us, time is linear.
Time is only abstract because we lack the ability to maneuver in it.

All you're doing is dividing up this something into successively smaller intervals.
But don't we do the exact same thing when measuring a distance in space?
We pick an arbitrary part of distance (say, a metre) and measure everything else in relation to that arbitrary thing.
 

GRoXERs

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Feb 4, 2009
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Most modern clocks work by measuring vibrations, either of a quartz crystal in the case of regular quartz clocks, or of cesium atoms in atomic clocks. So, this bit
elricik said:
They seem to be measuring something but no one knows what.
It's not like length.
You can point to an object with a real physical reality and say "that's one unit in length".
But time is abstract.
is just not correct.

Either way, it doesn't really matter - Time is just an interval during which things happen, and it doesn't have (nor does it need to have) any meaning beyond that. There is, to put it succintly, no Universal Tick.
 

TOGSolid

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Jul 15, 2008
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Clocks are just a creation of humanity as a way to measure the day, they don't actually represent 'time.'

Actual time is a fractal composed of all the potential outcomes of every situation.
 

Skeleon

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stinkychops said:
The fourth dimension as is currently viewed is time. If we were able to see in four dimensions we would see every objects movement through time at every interval. You should look up the ten dimensions quite mind fucking.
I watched that promotional video about the ten dimensions. It was mind-fucking, but somehow it made sense. But that was supposed to be a lot more simplified than the actual theory. Damn, if I ever heard the real thing, my head'd probably explode.
 

Major_Sam

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Aug 27, 2008
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That is a bit of a mind bender. With a question like this, I just think of the Doctor's explaination of time: A great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey? stuff.
 

VeX1le

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Aug 26, 2008
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NO TIME IS NOT IN A LINE IT IS IN A CIRClE THAT IS WHY CLOCKS ARE ROUND!

cookies and pie for reference
 

Zacharine

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Apr 17, 2009
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Time is not linear, there is no objective, universal time. Einstein proved this. Time is comletely relative to speed you are travelling at. And speed also can only be measured in relation to something else. Thus, Theory of Relativity...

Bend space, you bend time. That is why a clock at the Earth's orbit will move at a different speed that one at the surface. The accuracy of GPS system would be impossible without understanding this time difference.
 

Altorin

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May 16, 2008
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Didn't General Relativity propose that an objects speed through space and its speed through time were complementary, in that their combined speed is always the speed of light?

So sitting in your chair, hardly moving, you are hurtling through time at 300,000 km/s.. the speed through time we perceive as "real time"? When we speed up, any speed through space we achieve is reduced from our speed through time, and because even fast airplanes only move so fast, compared to the speed of light, they hardly make a dent on our passage through time. Astronauts have gone the fastest, and have slowed their "clocks" by miliseconds over the course of many takeoffs?

The perception of time from that of a single photon, flying out from the Sun, taking 8 minutes of "real time" to reach the earth, is instantaneous. We also only can register time, like space, as a reference point. We look at stars as they were millions of years ago, but for us, in our vision, millions of years ago is right now. If something were a light minute away, we would never know what it was doing for that minute of lag as the light reaches us. If the sun exploded tomorrow, we'd be blissfully unaware for 8 whole minutes.

Time is a tricky thing.
 

Altorin

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May 16, 2008
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Darth Mobius said:
I believe that we never WILL know how time functions, because the first person to figure it out will go BAT SHIT INSANE.
Einstein published General Relativity, which proposed exactly how time works in 1916. Scientists have known (or at least had a really good idea) how time works in the large world (some of the rules seem to fall apart in the atomic and subatomic level, but I digress) for 93 years.

I'd say get with the times, but that seems a little... silly considering how far out of the times you were :p
 

ajb924

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Jun 3, 2009
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I have always believed this, i know its probably wrong but its how i think of time.
Basicaly every moment in time is one still frame and each one passes by without our knowladge, this is how you can explain why sometimes minutes seem loner is because they really are. Also there is a new branch that opens up for every possible outcome. For example lets say you propose to a girl, she says yes, however in an alterniante reality, she says no and therefor time branches off in two different directions, now this means that every moment causes an infinante number of branches, because there are an infinante number of possibilities. This is why i believe time travel couldn't possibly be achieved, even if it was there would be no way to differenciate between the planes and would end up stuck in an unknown world. Please tell me what you think of this, idk why but this is how i pictured time since 5th grade, obviosly not with so much detail but the idea that every moment in time was one solid point and for each moment in time an infinate number of "possibility worlds" branched off. i know it probably sounds like bs to people with fancy colage degrees, but im not one of them so dont make fun of me =P
 

hypothetical fact

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Oct 8, 2008
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No. Not if you get sucked into a black hole they aren't because the universe would be moving at a different speed as your perception. Or you'd die instantly... nobody really knows until we throw someone in.